Robust secret storage in networks

View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:The problem of storing secure information on a network is studied. A formal framework for distributed secret storage is introduced, and possible applications in technological and social systems are discussed. The problem is formulated as the optimization of a robustness functional in which two competing requirements are balanced: survivability under network-degrading processes and resistance to adversarial compromise. An exact representation of survivability is derived in terms of minimal information-carrying subgraphs (MICS), which provide a reduced description of the reconstruction events relevant to the stored information. This representation is then used to construct semi-local optimization methods whose dynamics do not require global knowledge of the network structure. Finally, it is shown that, in a limiting case, the robustness functional can be mapped naturally to an effective spin Hamiltonian.

Comments: 14 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables

Subjects: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) ACM classes: H.3.5; E.3

Cite as: arXiv:2606.30261 [cond-mat.stat-mech]   (or arXiv:2606.30261v1 [cond-mat.stat-mech] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.30261 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Vinko Zlatić [view email] [v1] Mon, 29 Jun 2026 13:09:25 UTC (1,085 KB)